The present invention is directed to a surgical instrument transport tray. More specifically, the tray is designed to house, transport and store surgical instrument trays or pans which have been wrapped in a sterilization filter medium such as a sterilization wrap and sterilized.
While a number of the hospital and operating room supplies today are disposable, most hospitals still reuse many if not most of the surgical instruments within the operating room. As a result, each time they are used, they must be washed and resterilized before they can be used again. The sterilization process typically involves the placement of the surgical instruments within a sterilization unit such as an open-top stainless steel pan which has a perforated bottom. The instrument pan is then wrapped in a material which will allow the entry of the sterilant such as steam or ethylene oxide while prohibiting the entry of bacteria or other contaminants after the sterilization process has been completed. Once the instruments have been sterilized, they are kept within the instrument pan in the wrapped configuration until their actual use during a surgical procedure.
To reduce the risk of contamination/infection of the patient and the operating room staff, certain procedures are followed with respect to sterilized instruments. If the barrier provided by the wrapping of the instrument pan is breached at any time prior to the use of the instruments, then the contents are considered contaminated and unusable until the instrument pan has been rewrapped and resterilized. If the breach in the wrapping is found while setting up the operating room suite the whole suite is considered contaminated and must also be reworked.
The highest probability for breaching these wrapped and sterilized instrument pans is during the transporting and storage of them. To date, hospitals have been attempting to reduce the cuts, holes and tears in the sterilization wrap by cushioning the bottom of the instrument pans either with a huck towel between the instrument pan and the sterilization wrap or with some form of cushioning on the storage shelves, usually in the form of foam or a used linen. This cushioning reduces the amount of shearing motion that the wrap experiences when a wrapped instrument pan is pulled or dragged across the storage shelf, thus reducing the chance for the occurrence of cuts, holes, and tears in the sterilization wrap.
The surgical instrument transport tray of the present invention reduces the number of cuts, holes and tears by protecting the wrap from the shearing motion between the tray and the storage shelf. When the surgical instrument transport tray is used, the bottom of the transport tray accepts the shearing motion of the tray moving across the storage shelf thereby leaving the sterilization wrap undamaged. Additionally, since the material that the tray is made from its tougher than the sterilization wrap, the tray can resist repeated occurrences of the shearing motion between the tray and the shelf.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a surgical instrument transport tray for the sterilization, transportation and storage of surgical instrument pans and other devices requiring sterilization. It is another object of the present invention to provide a surgical instrument transport tray which is compact in nature thereby maximizing the amount of storage space available on storage shelves. These and other objects of the present invention will become more apparent upon a further review of the following specification, drawings and claims.